Flying is for Planes

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-05/ruby-princess-cruise-coronavirus-deaths-investigated-nsw-police/12123212


 

Police have launched a criminal investigation into whether the operator of the Ruby Princess downplayed potential coronavirus cases before thousands of passengers disembarked in Sydney last month.

Eleven passengers have died from COVID-19 since the vessel docked at Circular Quay on March 19 — the latest being a 78-year-old who died in Queensland earlier this afternoon.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said there were "many unanswered questions" about the cruise, which was operated by Carnival Australia.

"There seems to be absolute discrepancies between the information provided by Carnival and what I would see as the benchmark for the laws that the Federal Government and the State Government put in place in terms of protecting Australians from cruise ships when coronavirus had started," Commissioner Fuller said.

"The only way I can get to the bottom of whether our national biosecurity laws and our state laws were broken is through a criminal investigation."

Celebrity is handling this pandemic poorly and alienating away loyal customers, meaning that the lines financial recovery will be compromised by disgruntled customers. Follow Princess and canel all cruises for 60 days

Celebrity's attitude has been disgustingly poor

Celebrity  should do the same but gave me a useless ( and it is totally useless for me FCC)

My cruising will now be with Biking. Congratulations you won me with integrity

12 minutes ago, i-m-ed said:

Really?  My wife is a Doctor and we received no such email, and she works in a very high risk environment.  Did you get refund or future cruise credit?  We cancelled and took future cruise credit but that is due to having one that has an only exam final 3 days after we were due to return and the University implemented a non essential travel advisory yesterday.

 

They sent an email a few days ago . Wording as such "Boarding will also be denied for any person who within 15 days prior to embarkation, has had contact with, or helped care for, anyone suspected or diagnosed as having COVID-19, or who are currently subject to health monitoring for possible exposure to COVID-19. All guests who are denied boarding due to these restrictions will receive full refunds."

The reason for the charge back is simple. There are contractual limits on the time that can expire and if I do not initiate a charge back I may miss out,. Trying to call the TA or cruise line now is just impossible as they are engaged constantly.  They have now attempted to weasel out of the refund and only offer a FCC. .

Sorry I have no more time to contribute here. Other battles to contend with 

48 minutes ago, DD said:

Typically travel agents do not charge your card directly. Normally it is the cruise line who charged your card. To initiate a chargeback for a charge which you authorized while the cruise line is still offering to provide the booked service to you is ethically questionable at best. 

Actually NO. The cruise line wrote me and avised that because I am a Doctor and will have been in contact with coronavirus patients in the 14 day period prior to the cruise that I am automatically denied boarding. They also advised of a 100% REFUND. Accordingly I am within my rights to charge back.


 

My lawyer advises initiate credit card chargeback against travel agent immediately. The risk is that of either agent or cruise line goes bankrupt then you will be out of pocket. His legal view was that supplier can not provide the product or deliver goods - ie. The cruise line is unable to provide the cruise in a  safe and sanitary environment.

His words to me "Many cruise companies survive on the cash flow from forward bookings and that if a protracted downturn occurs, which it will, there is a real risk that some may fail financially and this would make any FCC your loss"

 

Its time to pressure cruise lines to cease all cruises for 30-60 days until things have settled. I will walk away from $5000 rather than risk it. Things are deteriorating fast

[YOUTUBE]O40_OlvS69M[/YOUTUBE]

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/victoria/norwegian-star-cruise-ship-towed-to-melbourne-for-repairs-20170210-gualy3.html

Explosive footage has emerged of passengers aboard a disabled cruise ship being towed to Melbourne, chanting, "we want answers".

A man on the Norwegian Star can be heard yelling, "what do we want?" before a large crowd responds with, "answers".

I'd be guessing it's two separate accounts.

 

With some policies you are covered if you purchase the entire e.g. travel (cruise) cost on your account.

 

If the deposit was paid on one account, and then another amount on another account, the entire cost has not been charged to an account so neither account qualifies for travel insurance cover.

This is exactly what has happened.

For all the horrible people you will be please to know RCCL will offer nothing in compassion. Just somehow I thought a double fatality of both passengers might have called for something. Not even a credit out of the non-refunded portion.

AND I may ad if its fine for all the hotels/airlines to refund 100% of non refundable bookings what makes a cruise line any different?

Just to clarify the two decesaed passngers did have travel insurance but there is an out for the travel insuarnce company based on technicality with using two different cards for payment.

I am still waiting on the agent but have emailed RCCL as suggested as well and based on that it is within the 70-46 days with deaprtures of May 9 and 16.

As it was booked via Australia the penalty is as follows

Days prior to Cruise Departure Cancellation Charges-

151 or more days deposit is refundable

150 - 71 days - loss of deposit

70 - 46 days - 25% of fare *

45 - 31 days - 50% of fare *

30 - 15 days - 75% of fare *

14 days or less - 100% of fare

Thankyou everybody for your kind words.

We were due to leave Australia in 3 weeks and had hotel/car bookings for 3 weeks from Florida to New York City and then flying to Copenhagen.

Our hotels were all advance purchase and non refundable. Companies such as Expedia, Hotwire, Choice Hotels are made full refunds in light of the circumstances. The only company that out-right refused was Hilton but I escalated the request on facebook and hopefully they will agree. I was truely amazed at Hotwire's fast consideration as I thought they may have been more difficult.

I am very sad to say that the two people I was travelling with have been killed in a double fatality accident. The 3 of us were booked on cruises in May. We had 2 adjoining cabins on two B2b 7 day cruises out of Copehangen.

I have contacted the agent who is talking to Royal Caribbean Australia about compassionate ground refunds for the bookings.

The travel insurance will not cover the loss as it was an American Express complimentary travel insurance and becasue they paid the deposit and final payment and on 2 different Amex cards the cover is not valid

They leave behind 2 sons and obviously a refund is desperatly needed. I am curious if anybody has been in such a tragic situation ans whether you can offer advice. The agent suggested that they may refund on compassion but wonder of anybody knows of a precedent?

Thankyou

When doing a Norway 7 days and Scandinavian/Russia 7 days what currency do I need?

http://www.cruiselawnews.com/2014/08/articles/fraud/bait-switch-ceo-stein-kruses-promises-are-not-binding-on-hal/index.html

You may recall that the Westerdam caught fire on June 28, 2014 as it was sailing to Alaska. The automatic fire suppression did not extinguish the fire and the crew had to use hoses to extinguish the fire. The fire flared up again and the crew has to extinguish it a second time. The Coast Guard forced the cruise ship to turn around and return to Seattle. You can read about the incident here.

HAL CEO Stein Kruse came aboard the ship later that night and spoke to the passengers. He said that one reason he came aboard was "to get this completely straight."

He was very apologetic. He said that one port of the seven day "full Alaskan experience" would be lost. He promised that to make up for the fire and lost port, the passengers would receive a $250 credit to use on the ship. Plus, Kruse said that in order to make amends:

" . . . we will send you a note to give a 25% discount off a future Holland American Line cruise."

However, when a passenger later tried to a buy a cruise with the promised 25% discount, a HAL customer representative told the passenger that CEO Kruse had misspoke. The representative said that the 25% discount was good only for a cruise of a comparable price as the cruise in question on the Westerdam.

Of course, this is not what the cruise CEO said. Kruse was very deliberate, careful and precise with his words. "25% discount off a future Holland America Line cruise." There were no limitations, exclusions or caveats mentioned at all.

The customer representative wouldn't budge. She said that "our policy is that we don't protect verbal misquotes . . . that goes from all the way from our reservations department up to our CEO."

The guest representative also referred to a "speech," which Kruse allegedly read from, which according to the cruise representative "specifically states that the credit would be from the sailing of the Westerdam." But this is not what Kruse said.

In most circumstances, cruise passengers are at the mercy of the fine print and the legal mumbo-jumbo buried in the passenger ticket. But here a cruise CEO came aboard to "make amends" and to be "completely straight" with the passengers following a fire. The CEO made a promise, not a "verbal misquote."

There is a legal issue whether what CEO Kruse said is legally binding on this cruise line. I think it is. But some other lawyer can sue HAL and argue about that. But it's a real shame, from a public relations perspective, when the clear promises of a cruise executive are meaningless and can be easily disavowed by a low level reservations clerk.

It just seems like there's SO many other factors:

 

I was trying to keep it simple:p I think as a rough guide it works

I have been doing a little project on finding an easy way to calculate if a ship is crowded or not. Its fairly basic yet I believe effective. It is a simple calculation of the gross tonnage per passenger. I know it does not take in to consideration all factors but I wanted to devise something simple for people to use

GROSS TONNAGE divided by TOTAL PASSENGERS

Scale

Below 30 This ship will feel crowded all of the time

35 – 40 This ship may often feel crowded

40 – 45 This is a mainly spacious ship

45 - 50 This ship will generally feel less crowded and spacious

50 – 60 This ship will have a very spacious feel and not too crowded

60+ One of the most spacious and least crowded ships

Examples

Carnival Fantasy 26.77

Carnival Conquest 29.72

MSC Fantasia 31.61

Carnival legend 33.18

Quantum of the Seas 34.20

NCL Breakaway 35.75

Adventure of the Seas 35.94

Radiance of the Seas 36

Sun Princess 38.54

NCL Jade 38.92

Regal Princess 39.16

Allure of the Seas 40.74

Nieuw Amsterdam 40.87

Grand Princess 41.92

Celebrity Solstice 42.8

Celebrity Millennium 46.66

Queen Mary 2 57.25

Crystal Serenity 63.96

I would pretty much agree with 99% of what you said.

Mostly you will find Carnival marginally cheaper for the same itinerary, dependent on the ships. In that case Carnival is fair value.

If you cant afford RCCL then Carnival isnt a bad choice

I have been caught with broken down ships before and I am not taking the chance. Its like the thin edge of the wedge. The chance of more issues are clearly greater when one already exists

What CCL should be doing is explaining EXACTLY what the nature of the issue is. If its something that they can demonstrate will not further cause other problems, and they need to be very specific, maybe people would be more trusting

The chance of further issues in a few months time and the possibility of cancellations is not something I will risk:eek::confused:

We're sailing out of Venice at 17:00 on MSC Fantasia, I think the latest to enter the ship is 15:00h. Which time would you recommend to check-in? We arrive at Venice train station a little before 12:00h and I thought about going directly to the ship (since the last time we sailed with RCI and we had no problem whatsoever having the same time schedule)

 

.

I am on the June 1 out of venice and I plan on getting to the ship at 230PM and not before. Theres no hurry

Virgin America and you will earn Virgin Australia miles

http://www.virginamerica.com/frequent-flyer/elevate-airline-partners.html?int=elevate_airline

I don't recall seeing any AEDs onboard any ship so far.

good question

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/surv/outbreak/2014/march28_msmaasdam.htm

Ten days ago we wrote about a gastrointestinal outbreak on the Holland America Line (HAL) Maasdam which was sailing routes in South America.

Passengers were stating that numerous people are sick with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other noro virus like symptoms.

Some passengers complained that they became tired of the HAL captain blaming them for the outbreak.

The public relations people at HAL and parent company Carnival Corporation ignored our requests for information.

The Maasdam finally returned to Fort Lauderdale and the CDC boarded. The CDC is now reporting that 65 of 1096 passengers (5.93%) and 8 of 569 crew (1.41%) were ill with an unspecified gastrointestinal illness.